2010 Ditto Festival, for beginners of classical music - Part 1

If you think classical music is nothing but formal and boring, try turning your eyes to the DITTO Festival held at the Hoam Art Hall and Seoul Arts Center from June 22 to July 4. The festival, which started last year, provides as a guide to beginners of classical music by composing its program of chamber music to concertos to performances combining multimedia. This year's festival is twice as big as last year's with friends of the DITTO ensemble -- pianist Lim Dong-hyek, cellist Guatier Capucon, trumpeter Sergai Nakariakov, violinist Goto Ryu -- are also taking part. Below are excerpts from the press conference attended by ensemble DITTO at the Hoam Art Center on Monday.

Q: The DITTO Festival is into its second year. Can you briefly introduce it?
Richard Yongjae O'Neil: We are really excited about the festival this year. Eight wonderful concerts featuring not only chamber music, the concertos, and symphonies but even some multimedia events. It's our biggest festival yet. But perhaps what I'm most excited about is everybody sitting here at the table and in front of you because this is my chamber music's initiative and the festival has grown very big. To me, the chamber music is the centerpiece.

Q: Shunske Sato, this is your first time joining the DITTO Festival. How was it and how did you come about joining the DITTO Festival? And what was your impression of rehearsal in New York?
Shunske Sato: The reason why I was able to join DITTO was because the first time I came to Korea, the Great Mountains Music Festival, that was about six years ago I believe, and Richard was also there at the time. Nowadays a lot of communication takes place on Facebook and Richard sent me a message saying he would be very interested to have me on this project and I was very much touched that he had remembered me from five to six years ago so that's how it came to be. One of the most thrilling things about playing with other people, be it with one person, many or ensembles is that each group always has its particular kind of energy. I’m not quite sure how to put it but there's a vibe in the air. The way musicians communicate verbally and non-verbally with each other is very special and I love feeling that and reacting to that and participating in that. And rehearsing in New York was of course my first time playing with them but I have to say it was really one of the most exciting rehearsals and one of the rehearsals that I laughed the most with everyone joking around but also working too. So it came off to a very fine start and I'm extremely looking forward to what's going to be coming in the next two weeks.

Q: I understand the theme of this year's fest is bohemian. How did you go about selecting this?
Michael Nicolas: Part of the idea of coming up with a concert program is to have a good theme as a thread throughout the concert so you can hear different types of works that are related in some way and make connections between different composers and seeing how different composers treat similar material of composers from similar backgrounds. So this year we decided to go with the Bohemian theme so we have composers from Central Europe but not of the German and Austrian dramatic tradition -- we have Dvorak, Dohnanyi and Kodaly -- and I really love at we're pushing the envelope repertoire-wise. We have two 20th century works on the program. We want to explore some masterworks by some lesser known composers. If we can introduce them to the Korean audiences, I think we've met our goal.

Q: The “DITTO Odyssey” program from this year’s festival incorporates 3D visuals. Exactly what is it about?
O'Neil: I was thinking about the micro and macro when I programmed the "Odyssey" concert. Kinderszenen is a solo piano. It’s a child's piece and Dong-hyuk will be the only person on stage. Fast forward to the second half Holst The Planet, it is for a very large orchestra and offstage choir. On top of that we're adding a whole bunch of visual effects that I don't think is not just images of planets but is more sort of an artistic voyage. I want them to focus on the very small and very large.

Reporter : Jang Kyung-Jin three@
Photographer : Lee Jin-hyuk eleven@
Editor : Jessica Kim jesskim@